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Scott Veirs edited this page Feb 27, 2023 · 36 revisions

Welcome to the top-level wiki for Orcasound!

Hot links: 2023 priority projects | community discussions

Add a photo and/or graphics to this home page?

1. Overview: network + community

What is Orcasound?

Orcasound is a hydrophone network in the critical habitat of the endangered Southern Resident killer whales.

Orcasound is an open source community building free hardware and software solutions for bioacoustics and marine conservation.

Orcasound is powered by volunteerism. Some folks are divers, captains, or general volunteers who help their favorite NGO deploy and maintain a new hydrophone. Some are software designers and developers who contribute via hackathons, summer internships, or asynchronous teams. Others are retirees or working professionals who bring expertise in project management, data science, artificial intelligence, or bioacoustics to the table and build innovative new solutions for science and saving soniferous species.

Orcasound is a do-ocracy. If you can build it with open source tools and/or cheap hardware -- and your innovative solution works for science and sustainability -- how you do it (or hack it together) doesn't matter so much to us.

Learn more about our community (code of conduct, organization, governance, resources, funding, acknowledgments, recruiting, Hall of Fame)

2. Onboarding: How can I help?

Add intro here that is beyond what is listed in README.md?

Ideally we want to quickly route incoming volunteers through info here that everyone should have read to be part of a fruitful community, and then custom info to efficiently get them contributing.

How do you want to contribute?

  • 2.a I want to join the UX Research and Design Team
  • 2.b I want to join the Dev & DevOps Team
  • 2.c I want to join Project Management Team
  • 2.c I want to help pioneer open hydrophones and marine bioacoustic hardware
  • 2.b I want to help maintain and expand the hydrophone network (deployments and maintenance)

3. Administrative handbook

How is this distinct from DevOps and/or governance section? Maybe it's more of a practical guide or FAQ?

  • How to add a node
  • How to put node in maintenance mode?
  • How to remove a node?

4. Listening & science guides

Maybe this is more of a catch-all troubleshooting guide or FAQ aimed at concerned community scientists persona? Or a general FAQ broken down by persona?

Concerned community scientist FAQ:

  • Player (Confirm/deny a loop?)

Professional conservation scientist FAQ:

  • Moderation guide (for human or machine detections)

5. How to build your own hydrophone network

A guide for replicating Orcasound for another region or species

  • Network organization & site selection
  • Hydrophone hardware (acquisition and deployment)
    • How science, management, or education goals can constrain hardware & software options and limit startup costs
    • Orcanode wiki
    • Hydrophone system deployment strategies
  • Open source software
    • Orcanode - audio data streaming code
    • Orcasite - live-listening app for crowdsourced event detection and conservation action
    • OrcaHello - real time inference system for killer whale detection
    • Audio data annotation tools
    • Bioacoustic analysis & data visualization software
      • Audacity
      • Ketos -- analyze with neural networks
      • Koe -- segment and cluster
  • Bioacoustic inspiration (an open Trello board)
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